Today I took her challenge and really tried to intentionally practice gratitude. I was grateful for teaching GCF today, a skill I think is fun, I even verbalized that to my students and they said, "yeah! It is fun." Gratitude and joy are contagious.
Today, I was grateful many times for moments I had with the girls. Funny things they said.
Like Madeline said she was going to wear her toes to dinner tonight, not her socks. And earlier when I bought her a treat for good behavior, she said, " Mommy I got this because I was a good girl but I did sit on the table top at the Red Barn today." I was grateful for her sweet heart to be honest with me about that. She also just randomly looked atme tonight and said, " I love sitting with you."
Anna Claire brought me great joy too. She was so excited to tell me that she and her Daddy made a deal that if she did all 16 of her homeworks this week she could finally try snails just like she saw on the Cooking Channel. If you polled 100 7-year-old's, I'm just guessing you'd be hard pressed to find one who has a snail dinner as an incentive to do well.
The little things. I was intentional in trying to notice the typically mundane and ordinary things in my life that actually bring me joy, and there are a bunch: getting to campus before the traffic hits, the sound of my kids running downstairs. Walking into a nice cool building after being in the hot sun. The way the table looks when it's set for dinner.
I feel like we do get so busy and caught up in our routines that we forget to just take in joy. And the key to it all is gratitude.
Here's the link to Brene's video (5 min.):
